The Book of Chimera

      As Rica had expected, the tour around the school ended near the very same cabin number 12 that was standing not so far from the lake shore. There were a good many of such cabins here, and stone pathways led to every one of them while branching off the main promenade and twisting and turning between bushes and flowerbeds. Rich foliage cut off the school noise partly. Rica stepped down on the stone patio before the porch and exhaled with relief. So many new experiences unsettled her a bit because of a powerful hit on every sense organ.       The cabin wasn’t so large but it looked very comfy. It was a standard one-storied cottage painted in light colors and ivy-cloaked. Then again, there was so much ivy everywhere.       As Rica approached, she saw a letter F on the front door post that was clearly carved with someone’s penknife. She darted a suspicious glance at her escort. Jean answered her silent question with a smile and shook her head.       “You should ask your roommates about it, Rica. Get used to hanging out with your peers. And now, come on in…” She threw the door open, a bit theatrically, and dropped something of a curtsey as she motioned the girl to the cabin. “As for your things, how few they would be, you should bring them here from your temporary room. You don’t need any keys. We don’t shut our doors here. Never. There’s no need.”       Feeling a bit shy, Rica stepped over the doorstep. Then she felt an invisible touch on her shoulder — “Make yourself at home!” — turned around and saw the closing door. Jean’s role as her guide and nanny was finished. She had to figure it out herself now.       Fortunately for her, she hadn’t to meet the tenants of the cabin: there was no one there. No wonder, for the school was still on.       Rica hung her brand-new jacket and scarf on the peg in the mud room and carefully cleaned her sneakers on the doormat. Then she walked around the rooms while getting used and acquainted. In this cabin, there was one large living room with couches, soft chairs, and a table (a humble and small kitchen was attached to it), a split bathroom, and two bedrooms with two beds in each. As soon as the girl looked into one of them, she backed out at once as she realized that this room was totally occupied. Some things were lying on both beds; piles of books were towering in bookcases, on shelves, and even on the floor; and pots with some plants were standing on the windowsill. There was something else there, for sure, but Rica decided not to be impolite and not to look over other people’s things. So, she closed the door and walked to another bedroom.       This bedroom seemed to be meant for her. It was clearly divided into two halves: uninhabited and inhabited. It was as if some invisible line went between them. One half was bright, hobnob, vivid, and the other one was empty and standard. Even beds were made differently… And that separateness hit Rica’s sharpened senses so powerfully (and those senses had endured a real cascade of fresh experiences whatsoever) that she shivered and decided to return to the living room and to wait for her roommates.       Several paintings, large and small, were hanging on the walls of the room. Those were landscapes, mostly: green and marine, one was definitely cosmic; a couple of abstractions were there, too. After she noticed an easel in one of the room corners, Rica suddenly felt extra intensely that these works were made by someone living here. The smell from the easel matches with subtle smells from those framed canvases… and they smell not only of paint but of someone’s hands…       Rica winked the delusion away and opened a small kitchen fridge to distract herself. She took her time to admire rows of soda cans, milk bottles, and yogurt packs and closed the fridge. Then she walked past couches and chairs while passing her hand across their backs softly and feeling the texture and warmth of pretty old leather under her palm. She got stuck in pictures again but within sensible olfactory bounds. And after that, she discovered boxes with cornflakes and packs with chips in a cabinet above the electric stove.       Why do they keep food here with such service in the dining hall? Then again, if someone wants some snack at an inappropriate time… I wonder, what do mutants think about nightly tours to the fridge?       Rica giggled and came up to one of the windows. A magnificent view of the lake greeted her from there. She had seen such amounts of sweet — and pure! — water only on pictures and videos online. That’s why she couldn’t help but admire how a slight breeze was blowing some ripple on the surface that was smiling with reflected sun twinkles. That was very different up close, and the girl was so carried away that she lost track of time and didn’t even hear someone’s steps. And because of that, when someone gave a quiet cough behind her back, she was startled with surprise.       As she looked around, she saw the same tan-skinned guy in the strange jumpsuit she had seen during breakfast.       So, these three live here… Well, that makes sense, if there are only three of them and the house is set for four.       “So, you’re the new girl, huh?” the guy grinned in a kindly way without even trying to offer his hand for a handshake.       Rica realized that he was standing three steps away from her, no closer. And then, it was like some surge: she remembered how they behaved themselves at the table, how everyone was treating him later, on school premises… No offered hands, no hugs, no pats on his shoulder or his back — no body contact at all! And even his two friends were beside him but like slightly apart as if they either protected him from the others… or the others from him. All these pictures flashed before Rica’s inner eye within a few seconds, and then…       Meeting any animal, let alone a preying one must be started by its rules.       The girl took a little step back and aside, put her hands behind her back, and nodded calmly. “Yes, I’m the new girl. My name is Federica. But Rica’s fine, too. That would be even better.”       Some puzzlement that flashed in his eyes was replaced by genuine respect. The guy grinned even wider. The first tick box — check.       “Nice to meet you, Federica-but-Rica’s-fine. I’m Catie.”       “Nice to meet you, too,” the girl smiled politely. Catie remained silent for a few seconds as he looked at her with a sly squint, and then he burst out into laughter.       “What, really? Don’t you wanna say anything else?”       “What else should I say?” Rica was frankly confused. But he looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Guys, she’s the seventh one! The seventh one!”       “What do you mean?” The girl was absolutely lost at sea. “The seventh one of whom?”       “The seventh of those who aren't amused with this name,” some clear voice responded from the door to the living room. It was that androgynous teen. The very same blonde girl followed him into the room.       The group was present and correct.       “And why does this name have to amuse someone?” asked Rica carefully. For some reason, she felt with her skin that her sincere puzzlement frankly made these three laugh. But in a good sense. And it admired them even, here and there.       “Oh, well,” snorted Catie as he turned over to her again. “A girl’s name and that is that…”       Rica couldn’t help but frown and scratch her head perplexedly despite all the rules of courtesy. She was itching to do it for a while now.       “But— Kathy is a female name… And Catie…”       “Never mind!” He waved his hand and caught a sun twinkle with his glove. “This is not a name at all, it’s a nickname.”       “Catafalque for short,” said the curled guy. He came up closer but stayed half a step behind Catie. “Why do you think he’s dressed that way?”       And this feeling, once again… No! She was wrong, although not entirely wrong. It wasn’t Catie whom they protected from others. It was this guy. Birdy bones, prominent cheekbones, large eyes that were looking from under the brows and a bit aside… He was tense even now: although he gave no sign of it, Rica felt it. Lots of images, lots of emotions…       Glances. He doesn’t like downright glances.       “Well, it’s definitely connected with his mutation,” answered Rica while she was looking absently somewhere above his left ear and standing half-face as if she was removing her focus of attention off him. “But why is he Catafalque?”       “Because he brings death to anything that he touches with his bare skin,” responded the teen after he changed a strange look with Catie. The second tick box — check. “I’m Elf. And this is Conrad.”       The blonde girl was still standing at the door to the living room. She was leaning at the door-post, arms folded across her chest, and Rica had another feeling as if she was X-rayed from head to toe.       “Male or female gender?” she asked carefully. Considering a male name… Rica never met any transgenders but she learned in the depths of the Internet that there were women who called themselves “he” and the other way around — men who called themselves “she”. You never know.       The third tick box…       The girl squinted her eyes for a moment — as if she looked through telescope sight — and then she chuckled and shook her head.       “Female. I like this name, that’s all. And my nickname is X-Ray. I can look very well.”       Well, yes, that’s it. I see.       “Rica.” She introduced herself one more time, just in case, and pointed at the first picture that caught her eye. “Is this yours?”       The third tick box — check.       Conrad smiled slowly.       “Mine.” She stepped away from the door-post, walked into the room, and stopped near her friends. “Well, gents? She seems to fit with us, doesn’t she?”       “You’re the X-Ray, you know best,” responded Catie with the same grin.       That resembled acceptance in some packs so much that Rica couldn’t help but give mouth. She ignored that she should be keeping a respectful silence for she was new here.       “Well, everything’s clear with you; I got you right — and you sensed me through. With you, too,” she nodded to Catie. “I took your barriers into account although I didn’t know that you’re dangerous.”       “And you weren't afraid as you knew how dangerous I am,” he pointed out and fixed his collar. “That’s not unimportant. By the way, technically, the cloth of this costume prevents my mutation from bursting into the world. So, if you touch me accidentally, you’d be okay. A little of what you fancy by touching me does you good.”       “And even we prefer not to do it for every little thing,” Elf added. His tension faded away… well, for a third of it. “So, only I remain, right?”       Rica tossed her head positively.       “How did I buy you?”       His friends smiled so widely that Elf couldn’t help but screw up his face.       “How do you thiiink,” said Catie in a singing voice; clearly, he copied someone’s honey-sweet intonations. “How many girls and guys might be sold on such a pretty face?”       “And you — not only you don’t throw yourself on his neck, but you also let him know that you respect his private boundaries and interaction preferences,” added Conrad.       Rica made a nervous hiccup and scratched her ear. No, of course, Elf was handsome. Very handsome. They often portray such boys in manga: a bush of dark hair, very blue and large eyes, finely wrought features… But how could she throw herself at someone’s head right from the start?!       And then again… Something niggled at her. Something in his image was— not exactly wrong. But different. Foreign. Alien.       It doesn’t work that way.       Meanwhile, Conrad and Catie kept joking about admirers of any gender but suddenly, Elf interrupted them with one short hush! — and gave a level look at Rica. Right in her eyes.       “You think?” X-Ray asked quietly. She momentarily changed her tone and became serious.       “I’m sure,” Elf nodded. “I can feel it. This one might. At the end of the day… she was housed here for a reason.”       And he turned his head to the side and threw his thick hair aside. And Rica lost her breath and grunted ridiculously as she stared, wide-eyed, at his delicate ear with a gentle earbud and tidy auricle. And with a pointed tip.       “Keep in mind, jokes about Legolas are taboo here,” Catie whispered loudly and confidingly. Elf sighed with patience.       “But— how’s that—” Rica couldn’t find any words because of astonishment but they understood her.       Elf twisted his lips and shrugged abruptly.       “Yes. A real one, from the look of it. This isn’t a mutation. I don’t have the X-gene in me at all. How — that I don’t know. I’ve been alone since my infancy; I’ve never seen my parents. I’ve been growing up on the streets. And I’ve never met my kinsmen.”       On the streets!?       Rica looked all over him. She was perfectly aware that every now and then, human society could be more despicable and disgusting than any animals, even the meanest ones. And Uncle Mbeki told her so, and someone else, too… Who? Doesn’t matter. Such a beautiful boy — alone on the streets… What could they have done to him out there?!       “Nothing,” Elf answered her unspoken question and smiled faintly. “No, I don’t read minds like the Professor. But it’s written all over your face. And not only face. They couldn’t do anything to me. Because I’m an empath.”       “One of the strongest, by the way,” Conrad confirmed with respect. “Even I don’t always read him.”       “But how could it help?” Rica was obviously missing the point.       The three of them changed glances. Catie smiled slyly and opened his mouth but Conrad shook her head shortly as if she forbade something.       Jokes— are not appropriate yet.       “As if you already don’t know.” Elf squinted his eyes. “You’re also a little— although yes, actually, just a little. You just feel. And I can imbue. Since I was an infant.”       “Once, he was so sick and tired of my jokes that I was hiding from him under my bed and in the trees for half a day,” guffawed Catie as he came up to the fridge and took a soda can out of it. “Such fear he imbued in me! And the Professor and the others stayed out of it. They said it was a disciplinary moment.”       “And we won’t apply it to the new girl,” Conrad summed up and threw her bag off to the table. “Otherwise we’re like small children.”       Elf snorted and sat down on the couch.       Only now Rica realized that the cabin got rid of vibes of alert sniffling, distrustful estimating, and other stuff that goes with meeting strangers. It was even easier to breathe now, and the girl used this opportunity with a couple of deep breaths. And after that, she remembered what she wanted to ask from the very beginning.       “What is that letter on your front door post? Doesn’t it go for vandalism?”       The threesome changed looks again, from different corners of the room. Conrad grinned and shook her head.       “F means freaks. That’s us. Once, this letter was being painted over or made over. But now we forbid it — and refresh the letter ourselves, regularly. Because that’s what we are, and there’s nothing to do with it.”       Rica reached in her hair and whistled. To call themselves freaks within the community of those who were freaks for the rest of the world… And these guys bore their title with pride! And everyone else respected them so much…       Why did the Professor house her exactly here?       “Because you’re the same,” smiled X-Ray as she answered another unspoken question ahead of Elf. And she extended her hand to the girl. “Welcome to the Freaks’ cabin, Rica Clayton. You belong here.”       Rica shook her firm little hand and realized, suddenly clearly, that everything would be really fine now.